Surgical and Hybrid Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in humans and is known to be associated with an increased risk of stroke, dementia, heart failure and mortality. Non-pharmacological therapy with ablation using either surgical or percutaneous techniques is recommended in drug refractory AF. Early attempts to devise procedures to ablate AF and restore sinus rhythm culminated with the Cox-Maze procedure, the first truly successful procedure. Since then, ablation surgery has been conducted predominately as a concomitant procedure. The Cox Maze procedure is complex and technically demanding and has, therefore, been extensively modified with new techniques for creating the linear ablation lines, new lesion sets, minimally invasive surgical techniques and most recently hybrid surgical-catheter ablation techniques. Surgical ablation techniques result in a marked reduction in atrial fibrillation when compared to conventional therapy with only a small increase in procedural risk. However, further research is required to more accurately quantify those benefits and to determine the optimal lesion sets, specific to the underlying arrhythmia mechanism and the optimal energy sources for ablation.